


Almost Done

by arcanemoody



Series: The Family That Finds You [3]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: (Ed is not being very nice), (well sort of), Gen, Grave Robbers, Grief takes many forms in Gotham, Grief/Mourning, Mind Games, Post-Episode: s03e14 The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:08:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22806094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanemoody/pseuds/arcanemoody
Summary: "Nygma, is it done?" Barbara's impatient, as ever."Nearly. I'm going to need to retain Butch's services for this next part," he says. For the first time, Butch notices the duffel bag at Nygma's side. Over-sized, black canvas with leather straps, zipped up.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma, Tabitha Galavan/Butch Gilzean
Series: The Family That Finds You [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1436476
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	Almost Done

_Is it done?_  
  
Butch is getting really tired of that question.   
  
He's adjusted to the fact that, in this new Gotham, the days of clean, easily won resolutions are long behind them. But taking on Penguin's freaky quiz-master as an ally has underlined that point in a fashion that rankles. _Temporary_ , he tells himself, fingers reflexively (electrically) twitching. Like the city he remembers, it's just temporary. Then he and Tabitha will bury him and their past along with it.   
  
_Is it done?_  
  
"Nygma?! Is it done?" Barbara's impatient, as ever; tapping her heel against the concrete floor of the parking garage. Queen for a day, anxious to kick off her coronation now that her last and biggest obstacle is eliminated.   
  
Butch has her figured out he thinks -- though, to be fair, she's not exactly hard to read. She lacks Fish's poise, Falcone's stoic regard, even Penguin's sense of manic joy. Everything and everyone is just a means to an end that she thinks will make her happy and probably won't; a hole that will never be filled.  
  
Her cohort's face is, comparatively, vague. Almost somber.  
  
"Almost," he says. "I'm going to need to retain Butch's services for this next part." For the first time, Butch notices the duffel bag at Nygma's side. Over-sized, black canvas with leather straps, zipped up.   
  
There's something in his throat when he swallows. A watery grave would have been kinder, fate restored for the Penguin who never should have flown as high as he did and, against all odds, had done so more than once. With the help of the man who was now carrying him like a sack of old laundry.   
  
"I'm going, too," Tabitha's eyes are steely, her support iron-clad.  
  
"Perfect," Nygma says, unfazed. "An audience as well as security."  
  
"Field trip, then!" Barbara replies, sunnily. "Why should you three have all of the fun?"  
  
Butch clenches his jaw against the thought of what she really wants: signs of life for Nygma, degradation for him and whatever's left of Penguin in that duffel bag.  
  
They make for a crowded foursome in the back of the limo, five including the bag on the floor between them. The newest member of the crew whispers directions to the driver while the rest of them sit in dread-filled silence. Butch recognizes the winding turns of the streets, the transition from riverside to industrial blocks, and finally the plush green hills of Founders' Cemetery. His blood runs cold as he spares a glance at Tabby who, beneath the soldier's mask, looks as confused as he feels. Barbara picks at the fingers on her gloves, contented while everyone else sits on the knife's edge as usual. The means of finding amusement in boredom is a rare commodity he's found exclusively in patients from Arkham (Barbara, Nygma, Penguin, even Fish). He almost envies it.   
  
The car stops at a steep curve, bumper tilted down toward the valley.   
  
"We're here. Everyone out."  
  
They file out one at a time, Butch heading up the rear, blinking against the steady rain that's picked up during the half hour they've spent in the car. He feels gravity shift as he realizes just where they are.

Gertrud Cobblepot's grave is well-tended: grass cut, fresh flowers laid against the stone. The dark granite is new, no doubt paid for with at least one mayoral favor. A funeral lily is carved over the name and dates, as well as a new epitaph: 

BELOVED MOTHER, NEIGHBOR, AND FRIEND.  
  
A shovel lands with a heavy thud at his feet.  
  
"Start digging."  
  
He meets Nygma's eyes, steady and piercing, feels gravity shift again.  
  
"...where?"  
  
"Guess."  
  
A family reunion, then.  
  
His stomach twists queasily.   
  
"You heard the man," Barbara's sing-song tone is only partially obscured by the rainfall, and the strain of clutching Tabitha's arm. Keeping her in place. "Get to work."  
  
It's grotesque, anathema to everything sacred about death and family. _Of course she's into it._ The woman who painted the walls with her own parents' blood would have to be.   
  
He picks up the shovel.  
  
The damp weather has made the top soil soft, allowing the first two layers to break away easily. The last four feet are heavier, particularly as the rain picks up. The subsoil is a tangle of roots and tough mineral deposits. Nygma had not provided him the dignity of work gloves. Butch can feel the splinters and slivers in his palms and fingers more acutely as he shovels faster, breath growing shorter.  
  
Finally, the edge of the shovel hits something solid.   
  
"Keep going."  
  
The lump in his throat feels bigger as he scrapes the mud away from the lid of the casket; heritage bronze with a pink finish. No doubt in honor of the lady's favorite color. He wonders who knew apart from him and Penguin. He scrapes and hisses at the sound of steel on steel, glancing up when the lid is clean.   
  
_"Keep going."_   
  
Nygma's eyes are pitch black in the dim light.   
  
If he were in charge, without six feet of vertical space between then, Butch would be happy to drive the edge of the shovel into his neck, smile as his blood spilled all over the grass.  
  
But he's not in charge. And the person who is continues to stand there, enjoying the show as her heels sink into the mud, a gloved hand clamped on Tabby's elbow.  
  
Time seems to slow down as he braces the edge of the spade along the opening, displacing the vacuum seal and using his weight as leverage to jettison both halves of the lid. He lets the shovel fall to the side as both hands cover his nose and mouth. Two years of decay, any liquid reduced by a particularly vicious summer heat wave. He closes his eyes at the sight of a gray brow bone, missing teeth, white linen reduced to threads by worms and bugs. Underneath the disturbed dirt, there's a warm garlicky smell he recognizes as decomp -- smelled once, but never forgotten. Bodies left to rot in the open air had never been part of the city he knew.  
  
"By an accident of fate, I was the acting medical examiner on her case," Nygma's voice is calm and sharp. "With everything Oswald told me, it took less than a day to find her body. Three people were in that room when she was stabbed to death. And the Galavans had their hands full. It stood to reason they'd give the filthiest job to the lowest-rung, bottom-feeding thug in their immediate vicinity."  
  
Butch glares up at Nygma; focuses on the distant fantasy of peeling the self-satisfied sneer from his skinny face layer by layer. Looking at Tabby and having the hateful words confirmed can do him no good just now.  
  
"You went to catechism," he continues. "Long before Fish Mooney found you. And with Falcone's little operation of body disposal dismantled, there was really only one place you could have taken her where you had access."  
  
Our Lady of Kazan on 5th Street. He'd been baptized there, taken communion at seven, confirmed at 13. He'd acted as an altar boy at countless weddings and funerals. At 21, Mrs. Cobblepot had been delighted to tell him that she attended Temple right up the street from his church, standing up on her tiptoes to pinch his cheeks...  
  
"Third pew from the altar. You covered her face with your coat -- that was gallant of you. Do you want it back?"  
  
That's when he sees it.   
  
Dark gray wool, bundled at what had been Gertrud's feet. Like a burial shroud. 

"You told Gordon that you didn't think Galavan would do it. Of course what you really meant was that you didn't think _she_ would do it. And you didn't think you would just stand there and watch while it happened. That's on you. A killer and a whore is going to kill and whore. But a bad man who, deep down, believes that he's an honorable man... oh my. That had to _sting_."  
  
The rage surges, blinding and deafening. He's used to that. But rage denied... it's paralytic. He's _not used to that_.

Butch's ears ring as he stares upward, eyes fixed on the tormentor looming above, barely registering the scuffle above him: a whip cracked, a whip dropped, Tabby furious and threatening, but equally stuck. Even more stuck than they were under Oswald's thumb.   
  
Denied a scream, his breath rushes out of in a wheeze, gaze broken by the the feeling of a canvas bag dropping into the grave next to him.  
  
"Open it."  
  
_"Nygma! You sick bastard--!"_ Tabby's voice disappears with the sound of heels scuttling in damp grass. Barbara. Protecting her asset.   
  
Butch feels the shudder in his scalp all the way down to his toes, revulsion and shame white hot. His pants and jacket soaked with the rain, he crouches down awkwardly, reaching for the zipper, eyes and nose burning with decay, stiff leather, and sesame oil...  
  
The corpse inside is desiccated and skeletal. Dead for months, not hours. Smelling vaguely of crushed chili and dressed in what looks like a new suit and tie, a pocket square of emerald silk.  
  
"This isn't..." he looks up, gaze squarely centered on his one-time rival.  
  
"No." Nygma's eyes are still dark, unblinking and obscured by the edge of nightfall. "It's Elijah."

Butch's mind goes to the portrait in the living room, then to the mummified head of his step-mother on the side-table. Penguin had known his father for less than a year, and that loss had unleashed a rage borne of grief and love reserved for few. He had known that fate would come for him eventually. And Tabby. The second they both stopped being useful, Penguin would remember what they'd done... and he'd let the axe fall. But Oswald's vengeance was a fire that burned fast and clean, while Nygma's was cold and lingering. Made to last. Designed to drown. 

"A man should be with the one he loves most in this world. Don't you agree?"

For a moment, Butch thinks he sees the other man's lip tremble. Just a slight twitch before the contemptuous mask falls back into place.

"Justice restored for an innocent party... _almost_ honorable. Consider it a gift." 

Later, after Butch lays Penguin's father to rest beside his mother, after he retrieves the mattock and (too-short) folding ladder wrapped in his old coat from the bottom of the casket. After he's forced to crawl the remaining two feet out of the grave, belly down in the mud and the filth, clinging to wet grass... he wonders just how many of them will be made to drown before Nygma's grief and vengeance are done for good. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, I had Ed's monologue in my head for a long time. Someone pointed out the fact that Jim and the GCPD are still looking for Gertrud's body during that initial time-frame between the mayoral gala and Galavan's death and TVTropes actually suggested that when Ed makes his promise to tend to her grave, she may not have been found or buried yet. That played with my head a lot and I thought it was only fair that it should play with Butch and Tabby's.
> 
> Also, yeah, Ed had Gertrud buried with Butch's coat and digging tools. He's been planning this since Oswald went to Arkham.


End file.
